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It’s simple. I’ve shown you how smart people can make stupid mistakes. How costly they are. How amazingly common they are. The wrong team, the wrong assumptions, the wrong risks transferred. Simple. Foreseeable. Evitable. But… You see them over, and over again. You and I as taxpayers pay the price. And if you work in infrastructure… and you are in these “saraos” (projects), you can pay an even higher price. Endless nights without sleeping, hours and hours wasted in never-ending meetings, irrespirable ambiance at work, having to go to the toilet with a lawyer next to you, demotions, bye, bye bonuses, and much more. Not worthy to be there. Not worthy to make those evitable mistakes. So, next week I’m doubling the price of my reflections about my last project, Puhoi to Warkworth highway, that you have below. There is too much value there, and the price is a joke. Compare it to the value of those lessons and what you can get from them. I know it, people that have bought know it, and even some of you have written to tell me just that. So, if you were hesitant, now it’s the moment. Tomorrow, it will be also a great moment. You’ll just be paying more.
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They thought the deal was done. Preferred bidder. Banks aligned. Lawyers billing like there’s no tomorrow. Financial Close… just weeks away. Then Lehman Brothers collapsed (2008). And across the world… PPP deals froze. In the UK, dozens of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects suddenly faced: No liquidity Banks pulling out Margins exploding Some survived. Many didn’t. I remember those days well… as I was parachuted to the A30 Project in Montreal whose financial closed happened end of...
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